WATER RESOURCES

Surface water
Surface water is water in a river, lake or fresh water wetland. Surface water is naturally replenished
by precipitation and naturally lost through discharge to
the oceans, evaporation, evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge.
Although the only natural input to any surface water system is precipitation within its watershed, the
total quantity of water in that system at any given time is also dependent on many other factors.
These factors include storage capacity in lakes, wetlands and artificial reservoirs, the permeability of
the soil beneath these storage bodies, the runoff characteristics of the land in the watershed, the
timing of the precipitation and local evaporation rates. All of these factors also affect the proportions
of water loss.
Human activities can have a large and sometimes devastating impact on these factors. Humans
often increase storage capacity by constructing reservoirs and decrease it by draining wetlands.
Humans often increase runoff quantities and velocities by paving areas and channelizing stream
flow.
The total quantity of water available at any given time is an important consideration. Some human
water users have an intermittent need for water. For example, many farms require large quantities of
water in the spring, and no water at all in the winter. To supply such a farm with water, a surface
water system may require a large storage capacity to collect water throughout the year and release it
in a short period of time. Other users have a continuous need for water, such as a power plantthat
requires water for cooling. To supply such a power plant with water, a surface water system only
needs enough storage capacity to fill in when average stream flow is below the power plant's need.
Nevertheless, over the long term the average rate of precipitation within a watershed is the upper
bound for average consumption of natural surface water from that watershed.
Natural surface water can be augmented by importing surface water from another watershed
through a canal or pipeline. It can also be artificially augmented from any of the other sources listed
here, however in practice the quantities are negligible. Humans can also cause surface water to be
"lost" (i.e. become unusable) through pollution.

Under river flow

Throughout the course of a river, the total volume of water transported downstream will often be a
combination of the visible free water flow together with a substantial contribution flowing through
rocks and sediments that underlie the river and its floodplain called the hyporheic zone. For many
rivers in large valleys, this unseen component of flow may greatly exceed the visible flow. The
hyporheic zone often forms a dynamic interface between surface water and groundwater from
aquifers, exchanging flow between rivers and aquifers that may be fully charged or depleted. This is
especially significant in karst areas where pot-holes and underground rivers are common.

Groundwater
Groundwater is fresh water located in the subsurface pore space of soil and rocks. It is also water
that is flowing withinaquifers below the water table. Sometimes it is useful to make a distinction
between groundwater that is closely associated with surface water and deep groundwater in an
aquifer (sometimes called "fossil water").

A shipot is a common water source in Central Ukrainian villages

Groundwater can be thought of in the same terms as surface water: inputs, outputs and storage. The
critical difference is that due to its slow rate of turnover, groundwater storage is generally much
larger (in volume) compared to inputs than it is for surface water. This difference makes it easy for
humans to use groundwater unsustainably for a long time without severe consequences.
Nevertheless, over the long term the average rate of seepage above a groundwater source is the
upper bound for average consumption of water from that source.
The natural input to groundwater is seepage from surface water. The natural outputs from
groundwater are springs and seepage to the oceans.

If the surface water source is also subject to substantial evaporation, a groundwater source may
become saline. This situation can occur naturally under endorheic bodies of water, or artificially
under irrigated farmland. In coastal areas, human use of a groundwater source may cause the
direction of seepage to ocean to reverse which can also causesoil salinization. Humans can also
cause groundwater to be "lost" (i.e. become unusable) through pollution. Humans can increase the
input to a groundwater source by building reservoirs or detention ponds.

Frozen water

Iceberg near Newfoundland

Several schemes have been proposed to make use of icebergs as a water source, however to date
this has only been done for research purposes. Glacier runoff is considered to be surface water.
The Himalayas, which are often called "The Roof of the World", contain some of the most extensive
and rough high altitude areas on Earth as well as the greatest area of glaciers and permafrost
outside of the poles. Ten of Asias largest rivers flow from there, and more than a billion peoples
livelihoods depend on them. To complicate matters, temperatures there are rising more rapidly than
the global average. In Nepal, the temperature has risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius over the last decade,
whereas globally, the Earth has warmed approximately 0.7 degrees Celsius over the last hundred
years.[5]

Desalination
Desalination is an artificial process by which saline water (generally sea water) is converted to fresh
water. The most common desalination processes are distillation and reverse osmosis. Desalination
is currently expensive compared to most alternative sources of water, and only a very small fraction
of total human use is satisfied by desalination. It is only economically practical for high-valued uses
(such as household and industrial uses) in arid areas. The most extensive use is in the Persian Gulf.